Ironically, TV was also getting more popular, and required an endless supply of “stuff” to air. Comedians who could manage it got into TV.

Eventually, the lucky (Milton Berle) or talented (everybodyelse) ones who made it in TV (on and off camera) made more money, had more comfortable lives and were seen by millions more people than they would have been in the Catskills.

But what if, before those great things had come to pass, the Catskills comics had tried to ban air conditioning in NYC because it threatened their “way of life”?

“First vaudeville, now this!! We demand the government DO something!!”

Thank God most of them were too drunk or distrustful of each other to get any such campaign going.

Plus this was the fifties, so people were less likely to think that way.

PS: The seventies were another matter — if you’ve never heard of the great Comedy Store Strike, click here.